The background of the present invention is generally the same as that described in the above-identified copending application and pertains to the continuous cutting of large rolls of paper to form sheets of predetermined size which are piled into large piles suitable for direct use by the printing industry. In the foregoing application improved jogger method and apparatus is disclosed and claimed which permits piles to be made which are of uniformly high quality as respects stacking and edge alignment such that they can be directly sold and used by the printing industry without being repiled. The expense and labor saved by achieving a finishing product of cut sheets which is directly saleable is substantial and, of course, the advantages thereof are self-evident.
Since the size of the sheet which the customer desires is dictated by his own needs, a sheeting operation may not be as efficient or economical as desired where smaller size sheets are desired to be obtained from relatively wide rolls of paper. Of course, in the sheeting operation the length of the sheet in the direction of travel thereof through the sheeter can be controlled within wide limits by the rotational speed of the transverse blade which separates the continuous web of paper unwound from the supply roll into the desired length sheets each time it contacts the bed knife with the paper web therebetween. The maximum tonnage through-put through the machine of course, occurs when maximum linear speed is run with maximum width rolls (sometimes with two or more thicknesses of sheets cut at the same time by feeding multilayer webs from plural supply rolls) and the use of wide supply rolls is not consistent with cutting sheets of width smaller than the width of the supply roll. Thus as the web travels through the machine it can be edge trimmed to the desired width but if smaller sheets are desired the width of the web is subdivided by slitting the web longitudinally as it passes through the machine to produce two or more sheets which pass edge-to-edge beyond the bed knife through the machine to be delivered to the layboy. Where two or more such sheets are delivered to a layboy simultaneously it has heretofore been difficult if not impossible to obtain quality piling such that the plural stacks of edge adjacent sheets which are piled in the layboy by slitting the on-coming web one or more times cannot be directly sold but must be repiled or trimmed before being delivered to the printing industry.